| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. IX, No. V |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Sunday, 03 February 2008 | |
 The
Starpoet Newsletter Volume IX, No. V Sunset
Gray skies turning grayer Winds bending the evergreen
Northward
Away from the storm Along the ridges of the Shenandoah
Ice and perhaps snow
Are falling Deep in the valley we will totter
Between the rain
And alternities less desirable Beneath the covers
Come morning We will not care
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2008 C. E.
  a migraine on and off for the last week. it will not win.
a beginning
Inside the Time Machine
At the age of eighty-seven,
What shall I see, Twenty years left and counting
Or a desire to quickly free? The meds should be pretty good by then,
The surgeons even batter,
Stem cell treatment and gene manipulation
May make my twenty, fifty,
And by then, if I'm not too bored, Who knows what roads I'll take.
Hope they can do something
About this pain in my back. Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2008
continuation
Common Errors in English Usage
Geese echoing off the clouds,
Gray plane against gray sky,
Monocoloured shades of rain,
Drifting, slow start morning.
Suggestion of sun beyond the horizon,
The direction of the rushing train,
We'll be below before the first real light, Down the tunnel to the rabbit hole. Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2008 I've caught a comet by its tail
As it journeys across the heavens; My words flare up in incandescent glory That trails behind me through the late night hour; I fall toward morning, my soul unfurling. Copyright Lisa Jain Thompson
February 8, 1996 treating the migraine
Post Post Grad
Having taken this muscle relaxant
(Medical not one with marinara sauce), I find myself more, how shall we say it, Relaxed, but still quite aware that my back Would much rather be in a hot tub. Not that the med has affected the muse
(She seems immune to chemical enhancement), But the poetry I find is a bit more laid back, Much like it was the sixties and I at university, Partaking of whatever my host was offering. Not that I partook of everything, of course,
Limiting myself to good grass and fine alcohol, Forsaking the acid and the strange white powders That circulated quite freely on around the campus (Not even learning to smoke: my lungs cough on weed). So here I am, an aging child of the sixties,
With a medicine cabinet full of legal prescriptives, A number of which have amusing side effects We would have paid good money for in college But now, with graying hair, I most often ignore. Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2008 Senator Ted Kennedy endorsing Barak Obama makes me hesitant to vote for him.
Carolyn Kennedy endorsing Barak Obama makes me want to vote for him.
I really want to vote for Hillary because she is a woman
-- we need a woman president -- but may not because she isn't black.
I would vote for Obama because he is black
-- we need a black president -- but may not because he isn't a women. Maybe I'll just vote for McCain.
At least I know why I should be voting for him. LJT
of poets, kings and sealing wax
A thousand minor poets have lived and died
(a gross misunderestimation), Two handfuls, maybe less, Actually knew what they were doing (At least as far as English goes). Most of those no longer matter,
As bright as shone the moment, They’ve disappeared into upper level English And doctoral theses of critical importantance To those searching for degrees. Down here with the groundlings, only two
Have lasting bearing: Homer for his Iliad and Odyssey, Shakespeare for his plays, and, among the women, Sappho still holds true – one English, two Greek, And a bunch of recent claimants unspoken for by time. The vote has been cast
On Poe and his contemporaries, Walt’s reputation is still up for grabs, Sandburg and Frost may come and go, Ginsberg and Eliot may yet pass, Yeats will remain an Irish Icon,
Melville a story about a whale, Keats and Shelley have surrendered To Mary’s immortal monster, Joyce to epic indecipherability. Starpoet will vanish like electrons in the wind,
A half-life in seconds as it should be, A scattering of words to survive here and there: Remember me always to those who come after you, When I was a comet falling across night’s darkness. Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2008 The Thought Experiment:
Gender Theory and the Naked Truth by Lisa Jain Thompson
A thought experiment:
Two transgenders, a female with a penis and a male with breasts and vagina, arrive dressed gender appropriately at a nudist camp. After checking into their room, they take off their gender appropriate clothes and go to happy hour out around the swimming pool. All the other guests are out there, men and women, male and female, drinking mojitos, and chatting each other up. Perhaps liaisons are being arranged.
Question:
Without their gender appropriate clothes, what is the sex and gender of the female with a penis and the male with breasts and vagina? Is the female with a penis still a woman and the male with breasts and vagina still a man?
Continue Reading
at
reaction time
It All Starts When You Say No
I seem to spark this transgendered hatred,
This testosterone rage of crossdressers and she-males Who accuse me of being a separatist (meaning I'm not one of them) As a way of defaming the transsexual experience and limiting The social space available to me by placing us all -- All the Within academia and the male dominated political movement That has replaced transvestites with transgenders among the cognoscenti And accuses of us – heaven forbid -- of being unwilling to be queer. Its not enough we have to explain ourselves
To our mothers and fathers and the straight world around us, We now have to justify our existence to the cross-dressing men -- The ones who love their cock and it's pleasures – Suffering the degradations of transgender male gaze Who insist we meet their standards of overly made up delusion (More suited to adolescent fantasy and titillation I would suspect), And make us into fetish objects that pique their appetites To explosive conclusions so desired by their coarser natures. The unwillingness of transgenders to believe their lack of understanding
Is a failure of their own tightly focused self perception hobbles them grievously, They cannot imagine that the fault may lie in their gaudy expectations And not the women who are busy with life, ignoring their demands and catcalls. The transgenders would tell us the types of experiences we should be having, Limited of course by their own sexual cravings and sterile imaginations, They would insist we conform to their rapacious longings, and, when we refuse To be nice girls, shout, scream, and deny us our existence so they not Feel threatened by the question of our continued presence at the discussion. Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2008 A humorous explanation
of how male and female brains are different by Mark Gungor. Food
Lunch on the Wharf
Mussel, lobster, crab and clams,
A sliver thin lace of abalone Floating in a broth of tomato and garlic, Slices of fresh onion and wild mushroom, Basil and oregano and the day’s new catch Chopped into small pieces and served with pasta
– spaghetti in a bright marinara – With a sprinkle of parmigian and romano And the crunch of The breeze flows through the Gate, Up the delta to the valley,
The air wraps around the cioppino As the broth splatters the table cloth And I place shell fish relics reverently On a small plate beside the chianti. Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2008 If I were to ask you,
During the lunar eclipse, To steal back into the woods, Would you give up the moon For the rest of the millennium, And a few quiet moments in my arms? Copyright Lisa Jain Thompson
September 22, 1996 love, romance, all that and time travel! The Labyrinth of Their Days All changed, changed utterly: -- William Yeats, Easter 1916 What is it about Gaughans and poets? In the ebb and flow of years,
A half century between the two, They found both their poets In a moment's grace, soul to soul With the murmurings of the muse. Our glowing lines, their blood, set fire
To the rebel beneath the glitter, Their wildest thoughts in our arms held, Side by side as we laid in dreams, Kept silent in daylight's cold gleam. Of war and war's alarums, our attention fixed
On the moment not the shadows inhabiting The woman lying beside her loving poet; Of the two, I am far more fortunate, Waking always beside beauty's bright creation. So that's what all the bother was about.
-- Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2008 For if one link in nature's chain might be lost,
Another and another might be lost, Till this whole system of things should evanish by piecemeal. -- Thomas Jefferson  Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1995-2008. Further distribution of this newsletter in its entirety is authorized. Email your letters and postcards or visit her contact page at the Starpoet website. |
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